Bleeding Blue and White

It's not been an easy week to be a Penn Stater. As the University grappled with its mistakes, the criticism mounted, some of it well directed, and those of us who are normally so proud to claim State as our own had to bow our heads in shame for the failures of those who should have known better. Let me say at the outset that if Jerry Sandusky is guilty of any or all the crimes of which he has been accused, he deserves no sympathy and all the punishment due under law. And similarly the University administrators, including President Spannier will deserve the fines and/or other chastisement coming to them if they are found to have failed in their duties, to the school and the wider public.

But let us understand first that these crimes must be proved in court of law, not the fickle and easily swayed court of public opinion that cares naught for facts but twists and turns with the tides of emotion. The Grand Jury indictment seems extremely clear, and there seems little doubt. But due process is just that. Sandusky, no matter the crimes he's accused of, deserves his day in court and his guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt before a jury of his peers. For the University, there is less to quibble over - whether Sandusky is convicted by a jury of his peers, or walks out a free man, the administration needed to act on suspicions and allegations, at least to the extent of involving the police. Unless they can show that they did, they stand guilty of misconduct.

But what of the others, those who acted according to the letter of the law, but now have their lives shattered in the frenzy and madness of the national outcry that erupted this week. Coach Joe Paterno, a man who seemed to epitomize a bygone world of honor and conduct, was summarily sacked, as the University sought to deflect the dogs by throwing them the red meat they sought. If I sound bitter, it is because I am. People outside Penn State have watched uncomprehending as students have rallied in support of our icon, while they, filled with moral rectitude of the highest order have declaimed on the many reasons that JoePa had to go for failing to stop what was happening. Based on national frenzies past, I seriously doubt that these critics have much interest in anything beyond the story, and the moment in the spotlight it affords them. For all their pontificating about the defenseless children, I would wager that most of them have no real interest in the victims, and the shriller they are, the less they care. I don't say that they are bad people, far from it. I'm sure that there really is a sense of revulsion and outrage, but they are so obviously focused on simply ensuring that someone, anyone pays, and pays immediately, that one cannot help but feel that they protest too loudly.

Critics of JoePa tend to fall into two or three categories. The loudest, and most influential group is the myriad columnists and op-ed writers with their generic "Why Joe Must Go" articles. Their basic position is that Joe must be sacked because he failed to do anything beyond what the law required. Quite apart from the questionable standard here - a law is clear and defined, while action beyond that is purely subjective - it conveniently skips past the fact that Coach Paterno did exactly what the law required him to do, and the Grand Jury recognized that when issuing indictments of his supervisor. To contact the police on his own, based on hearsay would have been wrong; it was the responsibility of the Athletic Director to move on those issues, especially after meeting with the graduate student who witnessed the incident at the center of this scandal. Yet, critic after critic has piled on, declaring that JoePa should be held to a higher moral standard.

Much of this stems from outrage that the victims here are children. The editors and columnists, in common with numerous people chipping in to join the conversation have insisted that they would have acted differently. I have no doubt that all of them would like to think that they would have risen to those lofty moral heights, but the fact is they do not know what they would have done. It's easy to declare exactly how we would behave in any given situation, but reality belies our hopes. There has been much criticism of the graduate student for leaving the scene and calling his father, instead of intervening or calling the police. The criticism is not unfounded, but in fact the spirit is usually willing but the flesh all to often proves weak. The student behaved, well, like a human being. He panicked, but panic and human frailty are not crimes. Now there are people who want to see his head on the spike beside his mentor's; threats have ensured that he will not fulfill his coaching duties at the next game, and his career may be well over before it even began. Does such treatment inject iron into the spine of the next person faced with this situation, or does it suggest that seeing and hearing nothing may be easier on one's health? Had he said nothing at all, no one could ever say that he had in fact witnessed anything. But he did act, he did report it, and for acting as well as he could he is now demonized and taunted.

Finally, there are those who insist that JoePa should have asked more questions and not rested till he'd gotten results. These ignore the human weakness in all of us. It is incredibly hard to believe bad of people we like, and our minds can rationalize almost any situation. It is easy for us sitting at home to insist that we would have acted differently, but we fail that test everyday, if we would only look critically at our own actions. It is no coincidence that many child molesters are family or friends of the victim's parents, that the molestation continues for long periods before it's finally detected. There have been cases where parents have flatly refused to believe their own children, such is the power that affection for the accused can play. To cite just one simple example, look at how political allegiances can affect reaction to similar accusations against Herman Cain and Bill Clinton. We can all hope that when tested on something major we will rise to the test and pass, but a little humility would be well placed when passing judgement on others who have faced that test. Jerry Sandusky had been JoePa's colleague for nearly four decades - only those who have had to act against their best friends can begin to comprehend what that means. The rest of us should simply hope that we never face that nightmare, for I doubt any of us would cover ourselves in glory. In discussing this with a colleague at work, he began with the common argument that Joe should have done more, but then recounted a tragic and all too common tale. Serving on a jury, he had heard first-hand testimony from a woman who aided and abetted in the molestation and sexual abuse of her own daughter by her then husband (the girl's step father) till her marriage hit the rocks and she reported his years of child abuse to the police. Think about this for a moment: a woman allowed her child to be sexually assaulted, refusing to listen to the child's complaints or recognize what was happening before her eyes (or at any rate behind her back) till her faith and trust in her husband and the rose-colored vision melted away in the heat and acrimony of a divorce. Yet we expect that Coach Paterno, a man from a different day and age, to suspect his friend and lead a vigorous investigation of that man. In all honesty, would we believe if someone accused one of our close acquaintances of such a crime, or would we shrug it off and insist to ourselves that no one we know and trust would ever be guilty of such actions? Do we really know how we would react? Why then do we demand that someone else be held to standards of which we would likely fall short ourselves?

Equally significant, while the sharks circle Penn State and her former Coach, the people actually appointed to watch for these issues receive a free pass from scrutiny. The Second Mile charity that allegedly was the primary vehicle for Sandusky's actions was in close contact with the children who became the alleged victims. This was an organization dedicated to working with troubled children, and yet they saw nothing to arouse their suspicions. And yet we demand that an elderly man far removed from the children, with no special training in working with children, with no interaction with those children, should have suspected wrongdoing and intervened. The State Police investigated Sandusky and cleared him of all charges once before - they seemingly had no reason to suspect that they had missed anything or that they should continue to keep an eye on the man; yet none of those so incensed with Coach Paterno have demanded that heads within the police hierarchy roll or that anyone within that organization be held accountable for fouling up an investigation.



I wish this had played out differently. I, too, like everyone caught up a situation not of their making, wish that more questions had been asked, that Joe had followed up his report with a bit more pointed queries. I wish that the gatekeepers at Penn State had been more farsighted when they sought to hush the matter, I wish they'd simply followed the law. I wish that Jerry Sandusky had never acted in a way that led to this. But most of all, I wish that Joe was there, leading us out the tunnel on Saturday. He was and is a great man, and now his career and life have been destroyed by the actions and inaction of his friends and the blood sacrifice required whenever a scandal is discovered.

Occupying Left Field

Since my last blog, I've been following the Occupy Wall Street movement with a little more interest, fueled in part by segments on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and last week's series with Citizen X in Doonesbury. While I had an instinctive sympathy for the protesters from the start, the cacophony of messages and disparate agenda made it harder to understand their aims. But once I delved a little deeper, and read a little more about them, I realized that these protesters, for all their reported elitist demeanor, are driven by the same angst that animates all of us. they are everyman, in a sense.

I suppose, though I still cannot understand them, that the Tea Party tapped into the same deep anger. Of course, one would have expected that anger at the economic mess that President Obama inherited would have been directed at the architects of the financial system's collapse. Yet strangely enough, the Tea Party galvanized opposition to the president, and in truly unfathomable twist, made the Affordable Healthcare Act the central point of their campaign against Big Government as personified by him, even as they rallied in defense of his perceived attack on Medicare, the epitome of Big Government, one would say. Stranger yet, the men elected with the support of the Tea Party wish to balance the budget by slashing Social Security; surely if Medicare is sacrosanct and not to be shrunk, especially by the government, the same would hold true for the other pillar of the Great Society.

Perhaps, the one lesson the Tea Party has taught us is that logic and rationality in the message are far less important than passion. That should enthuse the Occupy Wall Street movement, since passion is in no shortage amongst them. Their critics may watch the early snow storms and gleefully hope that the protesters will disperse before winter's iron fist, much like the Grand Army. But the fact is, whatever the message, most OWS protesters have a genuine grievance and are less likely to turn and limp away, when they have little to return to. Conservative critics may lampoon them as over-privileged over-indulged kids who don't want to work; the reality is that no matter how willing both spirit and flesh may be, there are precious few jobs on offer, much less to graduates fresh out of college with no work experience or those who have fallen victim to the recession and been out of work for months on end. Franklin Roosevelt could put America to work building the infrastructure that transformed a nation but today there are no comparable programs to absorb those thousands or millions of unemployed. Where then shall they go?

And the common target for that popular anger are the barons of Wall Street. Though many of the worker bees of Wall Street may not quite fall into the 1% category, their general refusal to accept their role in destroying the wealth of a generation marks them for dislike, loathing and even hate. I fully expected that in 2008, as the extent of their malfeasance came to light that we would see, metaphorically, mobs with torches and pitchforks. I misunderstood the power and extent of the control Wall Street exerts over the levers of government. Not only did the President and his advisers do much to avoid demonizing them (and still drew shrill rebuke for any remarks that were less than flattering to those titans of finance) but more importantly, the bailouts were tailored to protect their investments and profits at the expense of the taxpayer. It's instructive that Europe's negotiated bailout over the Greek debt involves a fifty percent write off by the banks. Contrast that with the hundred percent return that Wall Street was guaranteed on their poor investments and one may begin to understand the frustration and anger that's building amongst those who have seen their lives destroyed by clueless wizards waving their monetary wands and causing billions of dollars to vanish in the blink of an eye.

The Tea Party rode their passion to a huge Congressional victory, and today shape the future of the nation as they walk the halls of government. So far the OWS movement shows no interest in turning into a political beast. That is both its strength and ultimate weakness, for the soldiers on the frontline of this struggle will never know when the fight is over, much less will they reap any benefit personally, even when they force change as in the case of Bank of America and its now-aborted attempts to levy debit card fees on their customers. Those of us on the sidelines will win much as the OWS movement shapes the public discussion and hopefully nudges the spectrum back towards the middle and towards sanity. But they, the protesters who took to the streets of the financial world seeking to shine a light on the great disparities and twisted realities of the American Nightmare will fade from view and be forgotten. For them, victory will bring no success -  I only wonder if they know it. And how we will look upon them as this saga plays out. With nostalgia, with mild surprise, or sideways at them as we stand beside them in the trenches?